I’m Bob Doughty with the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.
The Food and Agriculture Organization says the locust situationin Northwest Africa is improving. The United Nations agency reportedlast week that Morocco had reduced its control operations by aboutfifty percent. Algeria, also invaded by desert locusts, reduced itstreatments by twenty percent.
The F.A.O. said locust control operations ended in Mauritania.But now that country faces a food shortage. The U.N. World FoodProgram says locusts invaded one hundred percent of the agriculturalproduction area of Mauritania.
The insects have destroyed not only cereal grains but alsovegetables. Not enough rain last year has made the situation worse.Grasslands for cattle have also been damaged.
The World Food Program appealed last week for thirty-one milliondollars to provide food aid for Mauritania. Agency officials sayfour hundred thousand people are in urgent need of assistancethrough two thousand seven. Mauritania has a population of almostthree million.
The country is estimated to need one hundred eighty-seventhousand metric tons of food to feed its population.
The worst damage is in southern Mauritania, home to one-fourth ofthe population. A U.N. study says sixty percent of families therewill not have enough to eat in the coming year.
The locust invasions in the Sahel area of West Africa have beendescribed as the worst in fifteen years. Aircraft have spreadpoisons over millions of hectares of land to kill the insects.
The Food and Agriculture Organization said last week that limitedcontrol operations continued in parts of Gambia and southernSenegal. Guinea Bissau and northwest Guinea were organizingoperations to treat small groups of locusts too young to reproduce.
Locust migrations begin when young locusts leave their nativeterritory to search for new places to mate and lay eggs.
One locust weighs only about two grams. But swarms can involvethousands of millions. One ton of locusts can eat about as much foodas two thousand five hundred people. Experts say locust migrationslast for several years.
The current invasions began last June. By last week, the F.A.O.had received sixty-four million dollars to assist the countriesaffected. At least nine million dollars more is expected.
This VOA Special English Agriculture Report was written by MarioRitter. I’m Bob Doughty.